


Behind Closed Doors

by onotherflights



Series: Prompt fills & Ficlets [7]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Dealing with Emotions, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Feelings, Fluff, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Patriarchy, References to Depression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-10
Updated: 2017-08-10
Packaged: 2018-12-13 14:45:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11762127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onotherflights/pseuds/onotherflights
Summary: When he got his bike, the whole world became one long road he could use to run away. He wasn’t used to people following him. That kind of defeated the whole purpose. Of course, he knew if he tried to tell Yuri to stay away from him, he would regret it. It hurt more to shut him out than to let him see what was behind door number one.





	Behind Closed Doors

**Author's Note:**

> #LetOtabekFeelThings2k17

It was easier to hide it.

Over the years, He’d learned how to conceal it. He had his spaces carved out, the places he could run to. Bathtubs were usually a good option, bonus points if there was a shower curtain to hide behind. Anywhere he could stare into a body of water and contemplate what it would be like to float with no end, the sounds of the world muffled by the water.

When he got his bike, the whole world became one long road he could use to run away.

He wasn’t used to people following him. That kind of defeated the whole purpose. Of course, he knew if he tried to tell Yuri to stay away from him, he would regret it. It hurt more to shut him out than to let him see what was behind door number one.

On any given day, it could be any number of things.

Sometimes it was the ghost of his father. He took the form of stained glass windows and whiskey bottles. He took the form of elusiveness, Otabek disappearing with only his bike under him. In the beginning, Yuri would text asking where he’d gone to, only to get a brick wall response. Now, he knew the tells and he knew all the hiding places. He would give him time, but arrive at the beach or the lake an hour later, sometimes bringing food to share. He never forced him to talk, so most of the time they sat in silence, listening to the waves.

Other days it came out with the rain. Clouds were formed of billions of particles of vapor, and eventually each one would become too heavy and fall to the soft brown earth.

Love was a lot like that, and people were even more so.

It used to take nothing to make Yuri rain. One wrong word and the walls of defense would rise like steel pikes in search of medieval heads, droplets of emotion spewing down from the skies. Over the years, he had condensed.

Otabek had always held heavy vapor.

Sadness wasn’t something caused by a single hurt, but by a great number of hurts accumulated and collected over time, held together invisibly until the weight of them became like solid gold around a person’s neck.

“I just think I feel too much,” He would say, Yuri listening quietly and molded against his back, arms wrapped around him. “I never wanted it to be a burden on other people, but after. . .”

It had been three years, and he still couldn’t say it. They had brought gardens of flowers to the grave, and he still couldn’t say it.

When his father looked down on him from heaven or wherever he was resting, if he did rest, was he disappointed to see his son cry? Was he seeing his only son, or was he seeing the Hero of Kazakhstan?

When he was a child, he was told what many boys were told when they were bleeding.

Boys don’t cry.

So he learned to ignore his bleeding and cry when no one else was watching to tell him he should stop. If a tree fell in the forest and no one was around to hear it. . .

“Nothing about you is a burden,” Yuri would tell him, “Feeling this way, it’s normal. It’s alright to unlearn what you thought you once knew. It just takes time.”

There was a saying that a skater’s heart was as fragile as glass. Otabek knew it applied to all artists, anyone who cut away a piece of their soul and embedded into something for others to consume at will. It didn’t matter if he got the recognition he presumably deserved. There were times he was on the podium with gold around his neck and he counted the number of people who had stood before him, who had more gold. Wasn’t the story about Midas supposed to teach everyone something?

The rain had stopped, for now.

They’d been lying in bed together for hours, and had only spoken a few sentences aloud, most of their conversation translating through touch. When Otabek finally turned over, his eyelids swollen and puffy from all of the water they had held and let fall down the surface of his cheeks.

“Close your eyes,” Yuri murmured, thumbs brushing the excess rain back from his face until it evaporated.

“Why?”

“Just do it.”

He let them fall closed, and felt the soft press of Yuri’s lips over each side, slow.

His lips felt like petals blooming.

**Author's Note:**

> umm this was really over dramatic sorry. But yeah please hug your artist friends we are very hard on ourselves and love to Suffer for the Art™


End file.
